


The Right Way

by HanaXans



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Comment Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 20:38:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HanaXans/pseuds/HanaXans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the prompt: There's never a right way to say this...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Right Way

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime mid Season 2, but no actual episodes mentioned.

Even when it was to tell the smug bastard that did the deed, he had a hard time being Death's Messenger. It was easier when he was the Executioner. To pull the trigger and feel the recoil. It hit the body even as the bullet hit the target. To sit across from the bereaved--in their house, their workplace, the interrogation room--and say he's dead, she's dead, they're all dead, and watch their faces as the news struck home was never easy.

Sometimes it hit Booth like a sledgehammer, how there's never a right way to say, _your loved one is dead._

\----

No one can ever truly convey the smell of death to someone who hasn't smelled it before. And no one who smells it can truly call it anything but the smell of death. It's even worse when the body has been burned in any way. Death and char is enough to make even her stomach turn.

It was a long time before Cam came to terms with the fact there's never a right way to say, _you don't want to see the body._

\----

The human skeleton consists of both fused and individual bones supported and supplemented by ligaments, tendons, muscles and cartilage. A newborn baby has approximately 300 bones, while an adult human has an average of 206 bones, varying from person to person. These are facts. Something that actually exists; reality; truth. He knows this.

Zach Addy was learning that there's never a right way to say, _your loved one was killed by blunt force trauma to the head; this is the impression left on his skull from a rounded instrument,_ or _your loved one was stabbed 17 times by a serrated blade; these are the cuts to her rib cage and vertebrae._

\----

She likes painting, and drawing, and rendering to canvas or paper that which is visually stimulating. She also likes reconstructing their faces, these lost and missed souls; finding them, finding out who they are. Jane and John Doe are the worst names she's ever had to give a face. Still, to sit someone down, and explain to them how she put someone's husband's, sister's, child's face to a skull?

There's never a right way for Angela to say, _these bones don't lie._

\----

Bugs are simple. They lay eggs, which form larvae, which pupate, and eventually reach adulthood to continue the cycle again and again. And since many love to make their babies in decomposing bodies, their predictable life cycle can act as a timeline to gauge how long a person has been dead.

But Hodgins knows there's never a right way to say, _your loved one was feasted upon by seven species of flies, and thirteen species of beetles._

\----

She doesn't understand people. Living, breathing people, they make no sense. They are irrational, predictable and unpredictable in turns, clever and incredibly stupid, and mix'n'mash of good and bad, nice and not-nice. She preferred the stories that can be made from their bones. Even when the stories rarely have a happy ending.

Still, every time Bones sits next to Booth to deliver the bitter news, she thinks there's never a right way to say, _I reconstructed the last moments of your loved one's life, and yes, they suffered._


End file.
